Endowments, preferences, technologies and abatement: Growth-environment microfoundations
Published
Journal Article
Will economic growth inevitably degrade the environment, throughout development? We present a household-level framework emphasising the trade-off between consumption that causes pollution and pollution-reducing abatement. Our model provides a simple explanation for upward-turning, non-monotonic paths of environmental quality during economic growth. Its innovation yields sufficient conditions that simultaneously address preferences and technologies. With standard preferences, an asymmetric endowment (i.e., at zero income, consumption is also zero but environmental quality is positive) leads low-income households not to abate, and further this condition is sufficient for an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for a wide range of abatement technologies. Without such an endowment, however, even strong economies of scale in abatement are, on their own, insufficient for an EKC. Copyright © 2004 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Pfaff, A; Chaudhuri, S; Nye, HLM
Published Date
- January 1, 2004
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 4 / 4
Start / End Page
- 209 - 228
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 1466-6650
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1504/IJGENVI.2004.006051
Citation Source
- Scopus